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Theodora Nicolo crouched behind a burning car. She could hear the heavy footsteps of the large green-armored Mutons in the building in front of her. No way out there. Behind her, the desert gave way to a gaping chasm. The refugee village had overlooked it, thinking that at least the aliens couldn’t stage a ground attack against them from one direction. A tactical misstep. She was trapped. The flames leaped higher, and she hoped the car’s fuel tank wouldn't ignite - she had nowhere to run to.
Glass shattered, and one of the aliens peered out at her from the second story. They pulled back and were replaced by the muzzle of a gun. Green plasma came hurtling towards her.
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Theodora Nicolo huddled behind a burning car. She heard Rune Erickson scream, high and terrified. It was cut short by the heavy metallic sound of a plasma rifle. Rune gurgled and heaved, choking on what Theodora could only assume was his own blood and the plasma afterburn, before going silent. Theodora hugged her knees and tried to take deep breaths. In and out. Every part of her wanted to panic, to run, but there was nowhere to run to. The abandoned building dominating the center of the camp was overrun by Mutons.
Hiding behind a stack of supply crates a short way from where Theodora was huddled was a woman she'd never seen before. New to the camp, bad timing. Theodora stared at her, desperate to catch her eye. Desperate for one last moment of human contact before the end came.
The woman turned her head just enough to catch sight of Theodora. Her jaw dropped. And shuddered. And jerked away from her face with a wet and grotesque tearing. The rest of her face too, collapsed and melted, her body collapsing and then reemerging, eight feet tall and amorphous. The Faceless stood and pointed at Theodora. It ran at her and swung its tree trunk of an arm. The claws caught her in the chest.
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Theodora watched in horror as the woman before her shuddered and exploded, a new body resolving itself out of the remnants of the old. The car behind her burned the heat from the flames lapping at her skin as she stayed as still as possible, praying that, impossibly, the monster would not see her illuminated by the flames.
The Faceless stood and pointed its gnarled claws at her. Theodora leaped to her feet and ran. The car was still burning and the flames caught at her clothes as she passed. She ignited, screaming.
The ground was filthy with refuse and leaked oil from scrapped mechs and cars. Rolling did not extinguish the fire but spread it. Her skin burned and cracked.
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Rune Erickson screamed and died in the distance. Gunfire echoed across the ruined camp. A grenade went off nearby, too close. Fighting, but who? The barely had weapons at the camp, certainly nothing that could hold off a full blown alien incursion. It didn’t matter - the fire was too close for Theodora to speculate. She shifted to the front of the car, avoiding the flames and hunkering down again.
Gunfire again, closer this time. A deeper explosion, and a wet, sizzling sound - a plasma grenade, or something else. Footsteps running, one-sided comm chatter and a woman in body armor slid behind the car. Their knees touched, she was so close.
She had sky blue armor, and a knight's helmet, complete with plume. The eight optics on the helmet's face briefly disoriented Theodora. She thought she was looking at some new and horrible alien, until the human soldier, the human woman reached out and grabbed her arm. Her hands were warm.
“You’re good, get out!” The woman barked. She had a scar running perpendicular over the left side of her mouth.
Theodora obeyed and ran. As she did, a woman hunkering behind nearby crates began to twitch. Not a human woman. The Faceless revealed itself and lunged at the knight, who didn't have time to get a shot off. The force of the Faceless’ blow sent her flying backward.
The knight landed and didn't get up, body still and limp. Theodora blacked out.
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The fire was spreading, so Theodora Nicolo shifted around to the front of the car, away from the flames for the moment. She looked for a place to run to, some sort of escape route. An airship droned on the horizon, but she wasn’t sure who it belonged to, and in any case, the run was impossibly far. Had the ship dropped the aliens that were now decimating the camp, or rebel soldiers to escort them to safety?
A grenade went off, the explosion echoing off the walls of the abandoned building before her. A Muton screamed a deep roar. A heavy body hit the ground, sloshing against a sizzling sound.
Something ran towards her. Theodora crouched, ready to dash away. The figure ducked down in the other side of the car and reached around to her, brushing up against her stomach.
A human hand, brown with bitten-short nails, still warm from the kick back of her grenadier’s gun.
“What are you waiting for, get to the airship!” Theodora obeyed the grenadier and dashed for the craft hovering near the edge of the encampment. As she sprinted past the central building, she saw a glint of light flash off the muzzle of an alien rifle. Theodora glanced behind her to follow the afterburn to its mark, just in time to see the grenadier fly backward with the force of the shot. She did not get up. The smell of plasma and burnt skin filled the air. The world went black.
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Theodora Nicolo kept her eyes trained on the airship. Rescue was coming, but would it reach her in time? She had heard Rune scream and the sound of gunfire nearby. Dead surely, and his killers so close to her.
Theodora hunkered down further, desperately scanning her surroundings for signs of rescue.
A figure in blue armor, helm like a knight’s, emerged from the smoke. She dashed across the open field between the building and the car and crouched down next to Theodora.
“Get to the airship, they'll get you out of here.”
Theodora stared at the soldier, too shaken to process what she had stayed. The soldier turned to fully look at her, helmet adorned with eight glowing lights.
“You've got to run. I'll cover you.”
Theodora nodded, face feeling numb. As she sprang to her feet, a second woman emerged from her hiding place mere feet away and burst into Faceless form. Theodora ducked into the central building, abandoning the airship. She pulled her knees to her chest and cowered on the interior side of the wall, hoping the soldier could take down the Faceless.
“Grenade!” Someone yelled, her voice low and gruff.
With a shattering sound and resounding echo, the building burst into flames. The metal roofing began to shriek and grind, and as Theodora looked up, the roof collapsed.
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Theodora Nicolo trained her eyes on the horizon, and the blurry speck that was rapidly coming into focus. A drop ship. But whose? The aliens were already here. The camp was on fire, the car behind her was on fire, and gunfire sounded across the wide empty plain at the edge of the canyon.
A figure ran across the dester expanse to her left, nothing more than a dark shadow flitting behind the building. Rune? Theodora wanted to call out to him, to know that someone else was still alive, but didn’t want to give away his hiding spot, or hers, for that matter. The gun fire had sounded so close.
The drop shop was pulling away, whoever had disembarked was apparently on the ground already. Theodora looked back to the building, where she had seen the running figure. Had they been followed? Had it been Rune?
She was hunkered behind a burning car, and the fire at her back was hot, so hot, but she didn’t dare move. Any movement risked drawing attention to herself. She was sure something was in the abandoned building, but their footsteps were heavy, no way they were human. Hopefully Rune had heard them too.
The flames at her back grew to be too much. Theodora feared that the car was about to explode, and broke cover. She kept her head down, and dashed for some supply crates. They had barely started breaking them down when the Mutons had appeared and started firing. Ae she fled, out of the corner of her eye she saw another woman huddled behind some vehicle scrap. As they made eye contact, the woman shuddered, face melting into a stream of flesh and dripping goo.
Theodora dove behind the boxes and huddled. The Faceless had seen her there was no way it hadn’t, it wouldn’t have changed if it hadn’t. She started to cry, tears flowing hot down her face. It was all she could do not to start screaming.
The Faceless was coming for her, it’s footsteps shaking the boxes Theodora hid behind as it ran towards her.
A shot rang out, a reaction to the Faceless’ reveal. It didn’t fell the monster, but it stopped it, just behind the crates and Theodora. The alien was halted, moaning. Theodora was too sacred to run.
The soldier, however wasn’t. She ran towards Theodora and the alien, a knight from a storybook, armor a gleaming blue, the plume on her helmet high and proud. A cloud of dust puffed up around her as she skidded into cover behind the crates, next to Theodora.
“I’ve got you, I’ve got you. You’re good, get out of her.” The soldier’s voice was not-quite frantic but verging on it, strained and cracking, and her woods smashing into each other. Theodora focused in on the scar across her mouth, a pinpoint of detail that she suddenly couldn’t lookaway from.
“Go!” The soldier clapped her on the back, pushing her up and out of cover. Theodora dashed, springing towards the airship. She chanced a look back over her shoulder, in time to see the soldier peak around the crates, and fire straight into the Faceless, who crumpled, a giant falling to the ground in slow motion.
Theodora Nicolo made it onto the airship. Safe.